The Phoenix Code (24 page)

He frowned. "I do this for a living, Megan. I learned a long time ago to be careful."

"Is that so?" Ander asked in a deceptively mild voice. "I once downloaded a psychology article about law keepers and law breakers. Do you know that if you become obsessed with catching criminals, you may develop their criminal traits yourself?"

"The hell with you," Raj said.

"Hit too close to home?" Ander asked. "I wonder what has you so wound up. Guilt?"

Raj made a motion with his hand as if to throw Ander's words in the trash. Then he went back to work. Megan wanted to believe him. But MindSim had its own teams to monitor NEV-5. They had hired Raj to work on Ander, not do security.

He tackled Las Cruces next. A firewall protected the LLCL lab, keeping out unauthorized users. A public area outside the firewall acted like a lobby for visitors, with PR pages anyone could browse. But only users with the proper clearance could pass the firewall and enter the lab. Although Raj had a high-level clearance for NEV-5, he had never worked at LLCL as far as Megan knew and had no authorized access to their webs.

First he figured out what computer addresses the firewall trusted. Then he forged a friendly address. The firewall had its own AI, one primitive compared to Ander, but an expert in its specialization of catching intruders. Raj slipped right by it. Then he skulked through the LLCL intranet, searching for clues.

Nothing appeared. LLCL had interior firewalls around smaller networks within the general web. Raj methodically broke through wall after wall, penetrating deeper into the lab, with no success.

And then he hit gold.

The Phoenix Project.
 

Two small files. That was it. Both were encrypted. Raj downloaded them to NEV-5. Then he slipped out of LLCL and swept his trail clean. With Ander keeping tabs on his every move, he deleted the records of his sweep, deleted the record of his deletions, and so on, until no trace remained.

Back in NEV-5, he brought up BioSyn's decryption programs and tackled the files, trying to unlock the cipher that guarded them. Megan recognized the first keys he tried. When none of those worked, he dug out several he must have hidden on BioSyn. The entire time, Ander stood watching, never moving, with an inhuman stillness.

Finally, Raj pushed back from the console. "I can't decrypt them."

"You're lying," Ander said.

Dark circles showed under Raj's eyes. "Calling me a liar won't change anything."

Emotions fought with one another on Ander's face: anger, desperation, confusion, puzzlement, resentment, rage. It was as if he didn't know
how
to react to the situation. Then he said, "Maybe this will," and swung the rifle through the air.

"No!" Megan jumped to her feet in the same instant Raj lunged out of the chair. The gun grazed Raj's head and he staggered back into the bed. He sat down hard on the mattress. His shell-shocked expression scared Megan. A blow to the head, even a glancing one, was serious business.

Raj took a deep breath and put his hand to his temple. Blood trickled over his fingers.

"I'm
through
with your tricks." Ander raised the rifle like a club. "Decrypt the blasted files, or I'll work you over worse than I did in the Solarium."

"So." Megan clenched her fist. "You did beat him up."

"Damn it, Megan." Ander shook the gun at her, more in frustration than as a threat. "I had to pull him
off you
. Why do you always believe him?" He took a breath. "I want those files decrypted. Now."

"Stop shouting at her," Raj said. "It's not her fault I can't do it." The blood was running down his arm now.

"I don't care whose fault it is," Ander said. "We're so close. You
have
to do it."

Megan didn't know what was happening with Ander's mind, but she feared it wasn't a stable transition. If they pushed him, he might go over the edge. From the way Raj was watching him, she suspected he had the same thought.

"Do it," Ander told him.
"Now."

Raj rose to his feet, then gulped and sat down again. The second time he tried, he managed to stay up. Then he sat at the console again. When he took his hand away from his head, blood dripped onto the holoscreen in front of him.

Ander's face settled into a more normal expression. Relief underlay his guarded wariness, and apprehension also. To Raj he said, "It's good you decided to cooperate."

His responses made Megan wonder. Ander claimed he had no conscience, yet his behavior implied otherwise. Had he really redesigned his hardware? Someday robots might carry nanobots that could aid such a process, but that was well in the future. She suspected he had only fiddled with his emotive software to hide his guilt when his conscience bothered him. He lied about it so they would believe his bluffs. It was a sophisticated ruse, sure, but more credible than his using wireless signals to drive quantum transitions in his own body, on an untold number of molecules, in such a way that they redesigned his nanofilaments exactly as he desired.

While Raj worked, Megan cleaned the gash on his head. Each time he winced, she wished she could take away the pain too. He glanced at her once with a gentle look and squeezed her hand.

When Megan finished, she sat next to Raj again, watching. He genuinely seemed to be having trouble with the files.

"Want to help?" Raj asked.

She glanced at Ander. "Do you have any objections?"

"Go ahead," he answered.

Megan linked into the computer using the console's palmtop, then jumped to NEV-5 and brought up her own decryption codes on BioSyn. She and Raj worked for several hours. It took a lot of finagling, but eventually they produced readable text. After Raj sent it to the printer, they hid the files and logged off BioSyn.

Raj spoke tiredly. "It's done. That's what I could find you."

Ander took the papers out of the printer tray and scanned them. "I don't understand this." He handed several sheets to Raj. "Does it make sense to you two?"

Megan had glanced over the files as they worked, but she hadn't read them carefully yet. She and Raj studied the document. It looked like part of a grant proposal. Apparently, Arizonix had indeed originated the Phoenix Project, but for some reason they wanted help now from the Las Cruces lab.

"This is odd," Ander said.

She looked up. "What?"

Ander still had some of the sheets. "It looks as if they're asking for money to dismantle androids they've created." He gave them the rest of the papers. "What do you make of it?"

After having written numerous grant proposals, Megan recognized the format. They were missing parts of the document, but the gist was clear. "Apparently Phoenix did create several androids. I'm not sure how many. Now they want to destroy them. Or one of them. They and their team at LLCL want funds for some sort of study as they take the androids apart."

Ander's face paled. "That's murder!"

"You don't know that," Raj said. But he didn't look much happier than Ander.

The android rounded on him. "You
worked
for Arizonix. You knew what they're doing."

Raj shook his head. "I was at one site for a few days, interviewing for a job. I never worked on the Phoenix Project."

Ander clenched his fists. Then he stalked to the glass doors. Pushing aside the curtains, he stared out at the desert. "And you wonder why I have hostility toward you."

Megan's anger sparked. "We've done
nothing
to you." She stood up, then took a breath and went over to him. "But you've threatened us with violence since this started."

"I feel trapped." He sounded tired, though he never needed sleep.

Raj joined them. "What do you intend to do?"

"Find the Phoenix androids," Ander said.

"And if you do?" Megan asked.

"I'll free them."

"Then what?" Raj asked. "We don't know why Arizonix wants to destroy them. I can tell you this much, though. I recognize some names on that proposal. We aren't talking about killers here. Those are men and women of conscience. They must have compelling reasons for their choices."

"Do they?" Bitterness honed Ander's voice. "You people made us. How much 'conscience' do you see at work in the murder of your own creations?"

Megan spoke quietly. "Maybe they fear what they created."

His arm jerked. "If I had waited even a day longer to run from NEV-5, I would probably be dead now too."

"Why?" she asked. "No one threatened our project."

"No?" He turned a truculent gaze on Raj. "You two left me deactivated."

"Of course we did," Raj said. "You hurt yourself, damaged the lab, and impersonated me. I could have been killed when you left me in that chair. It would have been irresponsible for us
not
to deactivate you while we slept. That doesn't make us murderers. And think on this. You want us to show conscience toward you, yet you freely admit you have none toward us."

Ander looked away from him. "I didn't say I had none. I said I could override it."

"That isn't what you said," Megan murmured.

He swung around to her. "All right! So maybe I'm just ignoring it. You can't tell me that humans don't do that all the time."

"What about your emotions?" Megan asked. "You say you don't have those either, but you're incredibly convincing."

"If I behave as if I have emotions, is that the same as
having
them?" He spread his arms, still holding the rifle. "Your bodies undergo chemical changes when you feel, like with love or the fear-flight response. What about mine? All those nano species—enzymes, buckytubes, picochips, proteins, carriers—they experience changes according to what I 'feel.' It's not the same as yours, but it happens. If I have emotions, it's different from anything you know. Alien."

Megan marveled at the questions he had begun to ask. "Maybe only you can say if what you experience is emotion."

His anger faded as he looked at her. "I really did want to kiss you at NEV-5."

She hadn't expected that. "Why?"

"Curiosity."

"Didn't you care about the damage?" Raj asked.

"What damage? It hurt no one."

"Physically, no," Megan said. "But you were playing with our emotions. You don't think that can do harm?"

He made an exasperated sound. "So I forced the two of you to admit you like each other. Horrors. No wonder you think I'm dangerous."

Megan smiled slightly. "You could rock the world with an ability like that." Her voice cooled. "What makes you dangerous are the kidnapping, your capacity for violence, and that gun. But it's cruel to play with people's vulnerabilities."

Ander thumped his hand on his leg. "This is useless. We'll never understand one another." He motioned at the console. "You two are going to crack the Phoenix labs for me. I want everything you can dig out on them."

"I'm through hacking for you," Raj said.

"He has a point," Megan said. "We do need to know more about Phoenix."

Raj stared at her. "You want to
help
him?"

"I don't know." The Phoenix proposal disturbed her. She kept thinking of Ander. To see him destroyed would tear her apart. But they had no idea what had happened at Arizonix. "I don't see how we can make an informed decision unless we know more."

"I won't break any more laws," Raj said.

"But it's all right to murder androids?" Ander demanded. "Because no law protects us?"

"No. It isn't all right. But we don't know why they want to end the project." Raj touched the gash on his temple. His gesture looked reflexive, as if he didn't realize what he was doing. "I gave an oath when I received my clearance, both to the government and to MindSim. I violated that trust by breaking into LLCL. Now you want me to commit more crimes. If you force me by torturing Megan, what have you achieved except to prove that the Phoenix team could have good reason for their decision?"

"What about
my
trust?" Ander watched him with a gaze as piercing as the one Raj so often used on people. "Tell me something. Why did you get so angry when I said you 'ate gravel'?"

Raj's voice tightened. "That has nothing to do with this."

"You're doing it again," Ander said.

"It's none of your damn business."

"Why won't you answer?"

"It's irrelevant."

"I don't think so."

"Fine." Raj crossed his arms, his muscled biceps straining the sleeves of his jumpsuit. "I got beat up a lot when I was a kid. I was small and skinny, and I couldn't fight. I was socially inept, several grades ahead academically, half Indian, and I stunk at athletics. They used to knock me down and shove my face in the dirt. It was humiliating, damn it. Satisfied?"

Ander spoke in a low voice. "Ask yourself what would you do now if some person insisted that your concerns about cruelty and prejudice had no validity. Then you know how I feel."

"It's not the same. I never threatened anyone."

"You don't think it's all part of the same thing?" Ander asked. "Why did you spend years developing your muscles and learning to fight? So they could never beat you up again. What happens when you translate that to entire countries, when 'muscle' becomes weapons and armies? And that's just with your own species. Put mine into the mix and then what?"

Raj lowered his arms. Then he turned and walked to the console. He stood there gazing at the blanked screen. After a moment he turned back to Ander. "No, the world isn't perfect. That doesn't justify violating my principles."

Watching him, Megan found it hard to believe he could have committed the crimes Ander claimed. She wished all those people who criticized Raj for his idiosyncrasies could hear this side of him.

Then it hit her. Raj had struggled to decrypt the LLCL files. She didn't think he had faked it. Were the Pentagon files encrypted the same way? His difficulty today implied he had never seen that scheme before, which could mean he hadn't been at the Pentagon. Of course the Pentagon encryption might differ from this one. Still, it made her wonder.

"I'm tired of arguing," Ander said. "I've told you the consequences if you refuse to help me."